Thursday, 19 July 2012

Streets Ahead

Streets Ahead is the
occasional column from London Walks' Pen David
Tucker…

A Big
House in a Big Woods on a Big Lake in Northern Wisconsin. That's where your
London Walks leaflet comes from in North America. But it gets even quirkier.

Which is
by way of saying, apparently London Walks has saved the smallest post office in
America! Story runs as follows.

From that
big house in the big woods on the big lake in remotest northern Wisconsin the
London Walks North American "mail outs" go to a tiny little town, a
half an hour drive away. The first time she made that drive Sheri saw three
bears, two wolves and a deer. And it's at least a once a week occurrence for a
message along the following lines to crackle over the public address system in
the little local school: "Will Mr. Simpson [the janitor] please report to
the office - there's a bear in the schoolyard and we need you to shoo him
away".

Now how
tiny is tiny? Well, the town has a library, a post office and a "gas
station/convenience store". And a population numbered in three figures.
The post office is a two person operation - the guy behind the counter and the
fellow who delivers the post. And in the last few years "business" has
been falling off of course because of the internet. But thanks to what's coming
out of that big house on the big lake in the big woods...well, the post office
has been granted a semi-permanent stay of execution!

If you
think about it London and Drummond, Wisconsin couldn't be further apart, in
every sense of the term. And something "connecting them" would be the
last thing you'd expect. Let alone a connection strong enough to save something
that's absolutely vital to a tiny, remote, rural community. And it's not as
though some big logging plant or something like that has moved in that's going
to throw a way of life completely out of kilter. It's just a very nice lady
going through the door of that tiny little post office every day with a pile of
letters, each of them packing one or more London Walks leaflets, and there's
enough of it to have saved the day.

It's a
tiny little nexus made up of hundreds of you guys - Americans and Canadians
who've asked us to send you a London Walks leaflet - and us here and Sheri in
her big h. on the b. lake in the big woods and the tiny town with its tiny post
office.

POST UPDATED 17/5/16A London Walk costs £10 – £8 concession. To join a London Walk, simply meet your guide at the designated tube station at the appointed time. Details of all London Walks can be found at www.walks.com.